Allied economic management

Britain was only in the early stages of rearmament when the war broke out, but after the fall of France the transition to a World-War-I-type command economy was precipitous. Churchill replaced some 60 interdepartment committees for war economics with the single Lord President’s Committee under Sir John Anderson. Within 18 months Anderson organized the most centralized and complete war mobilization of any nation. It included controls on trade, foreign exchange, wages and prices, and raw materials. The National Service Act of December 1941 outdid even the U.S.S.R. by making every man under 50 and every woman under ... (100 of 143,248 words)